River 10 is used to carry heavy objects, always.

So, when I last posted, it was the 4th of July.  Stars and stripes forever.  What seemed like would be an awesome beach day turned into kind of shambles starting off with waking up.  We all wanted to leave at 8 all ready for the beach.  All 10 of us woke up around 8something and decided to leave an hour after desired time.  We all walked outside and saw our van with yet again, another flat tire.  This time we don't think the infamous tire slasher visited again, but simply just a flat.  So we got into the van, called all of the government places to get it fixed and finally reached probably the only worker in the U.S of A who was working on this national holiday.  The tow truck came to change our tire and we were finally on the road by like 11:30ish.  We got to the beach around 1, just in time for every cloud in the world to roll in.  We laid there for a while until we couldn't take the sand whipping at us any longer.  We found something to occupy our time which consisted of food.  We were back by about 8 and I was in bed by 9.  Not my ideal 4th, but what can ya do, next year will be better.

On Thursday we were going through our usual day doing odds and ends jobs, until the afternoon.  A glorious flat bed truck pulled up to Big Blue with 50 sheets of 12 foot dry wall.  What did we have to do with it all?  Oh that's right, carry it upstairs through the winding staircase that is creeky and 100 years old.  This took quite sometime.  We really loved doing this, complaint free. (not)  We all decided that our objective for 10 months is to see what the heaviest object will be that we carry as a team.  Telephone poles?  Drywall?  Only time will tell.  On the upside of carrying this drywall, we now got to start to drywall the entire upstairs.  This made us happy because we now can see the second floor coming together.  Darryl taught Sam, Jamie and I how to jump right into it.  He gave us a huge wall to finish by the end of the day, we did all but a little piece, pretty impressive is what he said.  That closed out Thursday.



River 10 at the museum.



Friday we actually did not have work.  Darryl is a busy man.  We thankfully have a lot to work on before we go back to campus with our portfolios for both parts of this spike and our debriefing meeting information.  Friday morning was used to go over all of this paperwork.  Friday afternoon we scheduled a tour at the African American Military History Museum.  It is located right near our house in Hattiesburg.  Miss Sheila is actually the president of the committee for the museum.  She and her husband are retired colonel's from the army and are featured in the museum.  Miss Sheila actually has a uniform on display in a case.  It was nice to learn some history of African American's through the military, especially what Miss Sheila did since she is our sponsor on this project.

We had the weekend off and we used it as such.  We decided to use Saturday and Sunday as recovery days.  Sleep, TV, movies, fast food (ew, yes I ate it) and lots of sitting around.  We actually ventured to Target one day and I bought 2 movies to add to our movie rotation.  One being Mrs. Doubtfire.  Best purchase yet.

Monday through Wednesday were used to put up drywall.  The all-star team, as Darryl refers to Sam, Jamie, and I, successfully put up almost 2 complete bathrooms and a good portion of the hallway.  This doesn't seem like a whole heck of a lot of drywall, but trust us, it took quite some time to measure out the lopsided house's walls, pipes, and floor boards.  Since Big Blue is 100 years old there aren't many straight edges.  That makes the drywall so much fun to put up!  I am just glad we feel like we are really making an effort to expedite the process upstairs.

Our first wall.

This morning we got to go into the community of Hattiesburg to see some of the homes that R3SM has helped rebuild or repair because of Hurricane Katrina.  We got to meet 2 gentlemen who live in these particular homes.  It was a pretty eye opening morning.  One home took 4 years to be put on the list.  This man had to change his house to be completely handicap accessible because during the hurricane he had a stroke caused by the stress of the hurricane on his life.  His whole house has since been remodeled by R3SM volunteers like NCCC, Habitat for Humanity, and Christian Church Volunteers.  Another home we got to visit was done with phase 1 of remodeling.  R3SM is waiting for the funding for phase 2 to complete the roofing and siding of the house.  We learned that this man also waited 4 years to get his house on the repair list, but during these 4 years he still lived in his home.  He had no electricity, running water, or a bathroom.  It is amazing to see the whole street that he lived on had to be completely repaired by volunteers because of the hurricane.  The morning was pretty moving for me to see the individuals who own the house and who were effected by the hurricane.  I needed this morning for my sanity at this point.  Even when you think something is wrong with your life, it could definitely be worse.

For the rest of today and tomorrow we have ISP's.  Tomorrow is at the Humane Society in town, playing with dogs, puppies and other animals.  Today is at a farmer's market, my new love in life.  Hopefully when I go back to campus next week I will have almost completed by 80 required hours for that particular part of my required hours of service.  Pretty laid back week.  Yesterday I got to go with Miss Sheila to price out vending machines because I got a Coke machine donated to the house for volunteers to use.  She now wants me to get a vending machine, fine by me, as long as we get a plaque to represent our beautiful Coke machine we got donated since clearly I love this soda too much.

That's all for me.  All I can say is I am ready for break.  I am more than excited to go home in 15 days.  I really can't wait to be in Burlington for 10 days for a much needed break.  At the end of this week I will have hit over 1,000 hours of community service since February 27.  I feel as though that calls for a break full of nothing.  Perfect.  See y'all in almost 2 weeks!!